From the moment Jim Harbaugh first decided to poke Pete Carroll's cage this summer, Oct. 6 has taken on a morbid significance. Stanford at USC, and You Guess The Score.

Before Harbaugh suggested that this would be Carroll's last season, maybe 38-14. The game's in L.A., Stanford is coming off a brutal season, USC's chasing a national championship ... yeah, 38-14 sounds about right.

Then Harbaugh became an agent provocateur, and jacked it up to 51-10. Then he said USC might be the greatest team in college football history, an even more gratuitous tweak, and suddenly you could hear the enamel on Carroll's teeth starting to curl. Now the game sounded like 66-7.

But now it's Game Week, and the news is only worse for the Cardinal. Quarterback T.C. Ostrander is out after having a seizure Sunday. Ekom Udofia, the team's best defensive lineman, blew out an ankle and will miss the game. The best offensive lineman, Allen Smith, has been out for a month with a knee injury. There are bumps and bruises throughout the depth chart, as happens when teams get beaten soundly every week.

And USC is coming off a ridiculous performance (by its standards) against Washington, and needs the medicinal benefits that come from a big win, lots of individual success and the punishments that comes from letting one's guard down in Seattle.

So what now? 77-0? 103-0? A thousand to nothing? Giving the 401/2 points and betting on USC definitely seems prudent.

Well, therein lies the twisted fascination. This can be as bad as Carroll wants to make it, and he will have a coach's justification for it. I mean, a coach's justification other than, "I wanted to wedge this score down Harbaugh's throat, sideways."

It could also be as gentle as Carroll wants to make it, and he will have a coach's justification for that, too. What's the point of running up a big number against a team that isn't really empowered to do anything about it? Even in the not-too-linear world of college football, there is a point at which a beating becomes excessive even by the Darwinian rules of engagement upon which the sport thrives - a point where, forgive the analogy, kill becomes overkill.

And the line between those two is entirely Carroll's.

Now, there is, of course, a chance that USC could lose, a chance so small that nobody can see it without possessing a Stanford football scholarship. And that's as it should be. If Tavita Pritchard, Ostrander's backup, can't dream the big dream, what's the point?

But we're playing the percentages, and we're suggesting that there is no really defensible reason to think this won't be a rout. The size of said rout is the size of Carroll's appetite.

There are places where running up a 70 is considered part of the cost of doing business. The Big 12 is particularly adept at justifying that, most recently when Texas Tech dropped 75 on Northwestern State last week, and before that when Oklahoma beat North Texas 79-10. Sixties are fairly commonplace, about one a week, and occasionally even when two Division 1-A teams play (West Virginia and Western Michigan, Oklahoma and Tulsa, Arkansas and North Texas).

For some reason, though, the gratuitous blowout never gained great acceptance on the West Coast, especially against a conference foe. USC, historically the team best equipped to run up a score, has only put up 60 seven times against a fellow conference member in itsentire history, the last time two years ago against UCLA. Granted, 60 points is an arbitrary line, and probably no more meaningful than 59, but you have to put the line somewhere, if only to know if someone wants to step all over it.

This is the challenge that faces Stanford on Saturday, and USC just as much. Given the competitive imbalance between the two teams, Stanford's injury issues, USC's need to slap itself out of its momentary torpor and Carroll's level of irritation with Harbaugh for remarks made months ago - well, put it this way, there are a lot of reasons why the Trojans might be motivated and enabled to run up a serious score here.

In case you need to know, the in-conference record is 82, by Stanford, against UCLA, in 1925. In the era in which air replaced quilts as the preferred stuffing for footballs, it's 70, by USC over Washington State in 1970.

But somehow we suspect that Carroll's irritation at Harbaugh has waned. We also think that Carroll knows that a huge score is not going to inspire pollsters to put them back at No. 1 unless Florida beats LSU on Saturday night. In addition, we're talking about Week 6, not Week 14. Right now, the difference between 1 and 2 is entirely ego-driven.

So the central matter here, then, is this: Carroll can do pretty much whatever he wants here, but he won't. He will see to it that the Trojans win comfortably, maybe even by six or seven scores. But he is more likely to decide that he doesn't have to put down the hammer, and in truth, he has far bigger ahi to sear than Stanford.

And if the Cardinal are capable of bigger things than we suspect, then USC won't be able to run up a huge number anyway. Just because a thing seems possible doesn't mean it will be done.